At long last, after over a year and a half of relative inactivity, I have made a significant update to amfm.cc! At it’s original inception, the only search term I could accept was a zip code. That’s all well and good so long as you know what zip code you happen to be and that I can keep that information up-to-date (it is was already a few years out of date when I got it).

Today I am pleased to announce that search terms are now wide open to be street names, cities, states, anything you wish to indicate where to search from. I give all thanks to Google’s Geocoding API. This essentially allows me to accept any term that Google Maps accepts to pinpoint a location.

In the future I may implement their maps API and display all results in a map interface in addition to the current listing. But for right now, I’m doing good to get this much done.

Oh, and this update applies to the mobile edition of the site as well. Happy radio surfing!

I am pleased to announce a project that I have been tinkering with for the past 3 weeks. amfm.cc is a web application that allows you to search for radio stations based on a given zip code. Where this is really meant to shine is on a mobile internet connect device (i.e. a WAP enabled phone). The URL is easy to enter on a numeric keypad. Even the non-WAP version of the site will render in a useable fashion on a mobile device.

I still have a lot of work to do with the site such as:

expanded user input abilities,

better searching algorithims,

search stations by format / genre,

better formating.

The idea for this site came form my dad who said it would be great if there was a WAP site that allowed this kind of functionality. The FCC freely publishes the radio station information, so writing an application that uses the info is the only hard part. Feel free to submit your thoughts and comments to me at william@my-dimension.com, or leave a comment here. As development progresses, I will add updates to the amfm.cc category.

So it would take just over 350 cans of Coke to kill me. And 170 of my favorite Starbucks drink, a Venti Cafe Mocha, to do me in. How do I know all this? Easy, I calculated it over on Death-by-Caffeine. Input your poison of choice and your weight and you now have a recipe for a super charged death sprawl. (Via Boing Boing – How Much starbucks is fatal?)

Read a disturbing article over on Teachdirt. Apparently people have got this prideful notion that they can control the weather. This only proves that people will do anything to make a quick buck. Anything to advance the purported technological expertise of the human race. Indeed mankind has advanced in many things that are simply amazing: fire, electricity, the telephone, computers, surgical procedures, to name a few. I am all for learning to do new things but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Controlling the weather is not a task to be taken lightly. Back in high school I did a study on strange attractors and their applications in science. From this I learned why the weather is never predicted beyond a certain point. There are simply to many variables to take into account, many we don’t even know about, that make that kind of prediction very difficult. Chaotic systems do exhibit certain behaviors within a short time-span, but beyond that the unknown factors render such predictions useless.

In reality you can’t predict beyond a 5 day span what the weather will be like with a better than 50% chance of accuracy. Anything beyond that is fancy guess work, fuzzy math. So if we can’t predict beyond five days what an uncontrolled, un-human-influenced, weather system will do, what makes scientists think they can do better by adding their own influences to a system they don’t fully understand. Pride, pure and simple. My belief: God put chaos in this world to keep us baffled and from becoming all powerful.

Just today, I got my hands on the DisturbedTen Thousand Fists album and I am loving every second of it. I have been a Disturbed fan ever since The Sickness. I feel in love with the raw and gritty sound and it has come to refine my listening tastes even today. Believe was later announced and I scrambled to order the Limited Special Edition, bonus DVD and all. My opinion was that it was a little weak but still a great album and a wonderful emotional exploration for the band. Now comes Ten Thousand Fists bangin’ on my drums. This is by far their best album yet. It’s hard. It drives. And it’s beautiful.

The CD opens up with the title track Ten Thousand Fists to set the tenor for what is to come. This songs plays like a battle cry foretelling the coming of an unstoppable force. I feel like adding my own fist to this massive chant.

Just Stop is second up with a nice blending of styles form The Sickness and Believe. It’s a slower piece but with plenty of that “demonic lyric” stuff that Disturbed fans fell in love with to begin with.

Guarded follows giving a brief reprieve of the aural assault with periodic breaks into melodic ballads. But don’t be fooled, the soul of this song is hard, like a thump on the head.

Deify is an angry political retort aimed directly at George W. Something I’ve never been able to comprehend is why the music industry became such a huge political platform in the elections last year. And why was it so biased towards John Kerry? Neither one of these men really give me much confidence, but Kerry flat scares me. My own personal politics aside, this song rips at those who hold our president in such high esteem that they deify him.

Next up is Stricken, the emotional piece in the album (though I think everyone of their songs carries deep emotional context). It seeks a self-mourning with its dire lyrics and long, heavy chords. Not my favorite but still quite good.

I’m Alive and Sons of Plunder are tracks I can really relate with. It’s rolling rhymes call out to those who force others into conformity. Then with one fell swoop denies them the pleasure over taking this one into their grips. “Be your own person” would be a good theme for these songs.

Overburdened starts of very not like Disturbed. A clear guitar strumming awakens a voice a memory while waiting in hell’s line. But it doesn’t take long for the distortion to kick in and bring down the angst driven lyrics I have come to love.

Decadence is one of those non-creative songs that you still love because of its sound. Lyrically, there isn’t much here but a lot of repeated phrases. But set to a sound that will get your head bobbin’ in no time flat. There is a nice guitar solo at the end which is something that has been lacking in other Disturbed albums.

Up comes Forgiven with more throw backs to their older style. I could envision this being one of those great driving songs. Not particularly pumped with energy but it has a rhythm which is unrelenting that just gets into your skull.

Next is Land of Confusion, a cover of a Phil Collins song by the same name. I have never heard the original but if it’s anything like Disturbed’s other cover songs (Shout2000 & Fade to Black) then I have no doubt it is a faithful remake brought to bear with the bold style that Disturbed has come to embody. I can certainly hear Phil Collins-esque elements which make me love this song even more.

Sacred Lie is another political salvo aimed at the war in Iraq. In a more general context however, it speaks about not fighting futile battles in life, personal or otherwise. Constant battles for peace ride any such from ones life. Pretty powerful statement.

The sturm und drang lyrics of Pain Redefined combined with a bit of electronica make for a nice mix.

Avarice ends out the set in fast and furious tirade against the evils of greed and those that trample for the almighty dollar.

Truly an excellent album that should new and old Disturbed fans alike.

It is an interesting phenomenon which poses a catch-22 situation. Lemme ‘splain.

We are told that “Knowledge is Power.” If you know something about anything, it shows a level of education, even more so if that particular bit of knowledge is not common. In a world with ~6.5 billion people in it, events take place every second. Someone dies. Someone lives. He was arrested. They discovered that. It’s shinny. You name it, it’s happening right now. I mean now! So with all these little things happening on this sphere in space, how are we to keep up with it all?

Enter the media. Instead of me going to ‘X’ country to learn about ‘Y’ event, I watch someone else tell me about it. And it’s not just me watching, it’s thousands, even millions of my fellow sphere inhabitants watching that same event. Now we all know about it, except of course those who did not watch it. But what if I missed said news report? I am behind my fellow neighbor who does know. What does it matter to me if this event didn’t affect me in the slightest? Only that John & Jane Doe know something I don’t.

Enter the pride machine. Not wanting to be one-upped, I seek to discover this new information. And not only that but I seek out other events so that I may have the upper hand. Take that John & Jane. Naturally I will have a tendency towards information that is of interest to me. In so doing I make definitions in my social circle. I talk to her cause she knows the same things I know. Don’t talk to him. Before I know it, I have a set of friends and acquaintances with their own events in their lives that I must keep up with. Email is a quick and easy way to do this, so I do. Social network, set.

How do I contribute to my social network? By letting them in on information that I discover, and they likewise do the same for me. I get my information for a variety of sources: TV, newspapers, online news sites, RSS feeds, word of mouth, scrawling on napkins, etc. I got information coming at me from every direction. Have I got a prayer of keeping track of all this? No. Glorious.

So hundreds-of-emails-a-day and ad-infinitum-news-sources later I am confronted with Information Overload. The pandemic sweeping this sphere for which there is no nice cure. I say “no nice cure” because the only solution is for everyone to stop, just stop, driving their fellow sphere dwellers to the brink of madness in attempts to learn everything there is to learn. Don’t look to the information outlets to change, they aren’t going anywhere.

So what is my point? For you to make your own decision on who you view information. How do you view those less influxed with information? Here’s a novel idea, accept them. Accept them for where they are at, not how much they know. I say “Acceptance is Power.” We are compelled to learn and become knowledgeable, as such knowledge becomes a crutch, a weakness. But we shall always have the power to accept someone regardless of their privileges in life. Think on that one for a bit.

I recently found out about a nifty homepage service at Netvibes.com. Everything about the page can be customized, including the title of the page. Add the headlines you want to know about, rearrange them in the order you like, check your Gmail account and search the web all from one spot. All this from a service that was just released two and a half weeks ago (Sept 15th). New features are added constantly, even faster than I can discover them. For instance, only today did I discover that I could listen to Podcasts with out leaving the page. Not that I’ve listened to many podcasts my self, but now that it is so easy, I think I will do more of it.

Almost a year ago to the day I got my hands on a gmail account. They were a lot harder to aquire then they are now. Now I have 100 invites to give out which replenishes itself every month. I was giddy with anticipation at the newness of the account. Gmail’s interface was, and still is, unlike anything I had ever used before. The concept of labels (as opposed to folders) was a radical concept that instantly lended itself to fun possibilities.

But with that was also apprehension of leaving my in place MUA, Thunderbird. Thunderbird held nearly five years of emails, all of my contacts and was customized to work within my needs. Truely a testament to a glorious application, unlike other corporate code heaps I know. *cough*Outlook*Cough* I also didn’t like the prospect of advertising a new email address, it is always a major pain in the neck. So my new shinny Gmail account lay unused for nearly a year because the change would be to disruptive to how I work.

But recently Gmail added a new feature that revitalized my longing to use that account. Basically, the feature allows me to send emails from Gmail as if they from another email address. This combined with forwarding my current emails to the Gmail account wouls allow a seamless changeover for everyone who emails me. So seamless, they don’t even realize I made a change at all. Well that is one obstacle down.

But my corpus of email was still stored in Thunderbird with no nice way transferring it to Gmail. Doing a simple forward wouldn’t work, I’d lose all the useful metadata (sender namely) of the original emails. So I hit the search once again to find a solution. And stumble upon I did the Mail Redirect extension that allowed a true forward of my emails. Sweet!

So I implemented these changes sometime last week and I must say I am loving it. I’ll be honest, Thunderbird can be a memory hog if you don’t give it candy every hour. To not have to run it 24×7 is such a relief.

I have also made the same changeover with my work address. Gmail just became my email client for two of my email accounts. And I can add some many more, it’s great. I will miss Thunderbird. It served me well. It deserves every ounce of my respect. It is just time for me to move on because the need for mobility is becoming very high. Gmail offers me that mobility in a way Thunderbird never can (unless Mozilla creates an Exchange-esque email server).

As the two people who have been reading my site have noticed, I have made a few changes here. The look has changed along with an overhaul/upgrade to the software running this site. It is just shy of year since my last post on this blog. To say things have changed in that time would be an understatement. I am taking part-time classes now. I have been making great strides in helping my company develop its product. On a side note, working with overseas developers is laboriously slow.

As I try to get back into a blogging rhythm, I will undoubtedly change my focus concerning the topics I write about. Before, my focus was to write about web technology in general with a few flourishes into related threads. I found that doing so restricted my material and I quickly lost the drive to keep up the experience. Now, I think my topics will be farther reaching and will change with what has captivated my interest for that particular moment in time. As of yet, I hold no pretenses as to any schedule but rather I hope to make this a come and go thing for me. I am not the first to say so, but blogging is hard. A lot of thought and time is required to make it happen. This is a challenge for one such as myself who has a hard time staying motivated on laborious tasks.

So with that I leave you in the precious void of my mind and I do hope you find your way and find it well. It’s a precarious place filled with many things unexplored as of yet. Not just yet…